U.S. gets 'birth certificate'

May 01, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday officially handed over to the United States the 500-year-old map that was the first to tell the world of a new land it called America. Library of Congress historians say the world map, completed by German-born cleric and cartographer Martin Waldseemueller in 1507, is the first known document to use the name America -- named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci -- the first to depict the Western Hemisphere and the first to show separate Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Merkel, joining House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in ceremonies at the Library of Congress, recalled that the map is sometimes referred to as "America's birth certificate," and that Waldseemueller and Vespucci can justifiably be called the "godfathers" of America. Waldseemueller's work recognizes the voyages of Christopher Columbus, but chooses to honor Vespucci, who made several voyages along the South American coast shortly after Columbus and concluded that he had found a New World unknown to Europe. Columbus died in 1506 still believing his four voyages had taken him to Asia. "I see no reason why we should not call this other part 'Amerige,' that is to say the land of Americus, or America, after the sagacious discoverer," Waldseemueller wrote in an accompanying book. The full title for the 12-panel map covering 36 square feet was "a drawing of the whole earth following the tradition of Ptolemy and the travels of Amerigo Vespucci and others." Waldseemueller, who worked out of a school in St. Die in northeast France, did not use the name "America" in several subsequent maps, but by 1520 several other cartographers had adopted the appellation and it came into common usage. The German prince who owned the map -- the only known surviving copy of the original print of 1,000 -- agreed in 2001 to sell it to the Library of Congress for $10 million. Congress provided half the money, with the rest coming from private contributors. The deal was finalized in 2003 and the map has been at the Library of Congress since then, but the two sides had been unable to arrange an official transfer, required because the map was on Germany's national culture list, until now. The Library of Congress plans to put the map on permanent display in December.